In a parallel of a market economy, we find ourselves in an attention economy, tailoring our digital stories to maximize the numbers of friends, followers or replies, deploying our digital narratives in competition with other users for a share of the audience’s limited attention. Rather than engage in conversations, we can find ourselves attempting to cultivate audiences.

As educators, we know that we need to help young people understand how their digital stories might be interpreted and appropriated, and support them to maintain their privacy. But can we also find ways to help them tell their stories in ways that are not just about presenting idealized versions of themselves to a corporate world, but allow them to critique these narratives and gain agency over their own stories?

Dozens of studies by psychologists, neurobiologists, and educators point to the same conclusion: When we go online, we enter an environment that promotes cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking, and superficial learning. Even as the Internet grants us easy access to vast amounts of information, it is turning us into shallower thinkers, literally changing the structure of our brain.

What we’re experiencing is, in a metaphorical sense, a reversal of the early trajectory of civilization: We are evolving from cultivators of personal knowledge into hunters and gatherers in the electronic data forest. In the process, we seem fated to sacrifice much of what makes our minds so interesting.

This paper examines the idea of privacy in the world of ‘intimacy 2.0’, the use of Web 2.0 social networking technologies and multimedia for the routine posting of intimate details of users’ lives. It will argue that, although privacy is often conceived as a right with benefits that accrue to the individual, it is better seen as a public good, whose benefits accrue to the community in general. In that case, the costs of allowing invasions of one’s privacy do not solely fall on the individual who is unwise enough to do so, but also on wider society.

It’s generally a good idea to change your password periodically. It’s also advisable to ensure that your social networking passwords are all different and to generate difficult passwords that include numbers, capital letters and special characters, if at all possible. Roboform, PassPack and KeePass are a few free or affordable resources to help you manage your online passwords in a secure fashion.